June Holidays and National Days
A word search for every day of June 2027. Each date has its occasion, a line on what the day is about and a free puzzle to go with it, so you can plan the month's puzzles ahead or pick a theme for any day you like. Every puzzle prints in easy, medium or hard, or plays online against a friend.
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Word Search of the Month
June, Day by Day
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The Hurricane Season Begins
Hurricanes are named so that warnings cannot be confused. Before the lists, forecasters described storms by latitude and longitude, and two bulletins about two storms sounded identical.
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Italy's Republic Day
Italy voted out its monarchy by about two million votes in 1946, and the royal family was required to leave the country. The ban on male heirs returning lasted until 2002.
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The First American Spacewalk
Ed White enjoyed it so much he would not come back in. Mission control spent four minutes asking; his own words on going back through the hatch were that it was the saddest moment of his life.
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National Cheese Day
The holes in Swiss cheese are bacteria breathing out. They were considered a defect for centuries, and modern Emmental has fewer of them because the milk is cleaner.
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World Environment Day
The hole in the ozone layer is closing. It is the one global environmental problem that was identified, legislated against, and largely fixed.
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The First Drive-In
The first drive-in cinema was invented by a man trying to solve his mother's problem. She found cinema seats uncomfortable, so he tested projections onto a sheet in the garden with a car parked in front of it.
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National Chocolate Ice Cream Day
Chocolate ice cream is older than vanilla. Neapolitan recipe books were writing it down about a century before anyone thought to freeze vanilla on its own.
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World Oceans Day
More people have been to the Moon than to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The deepest point is about eleven kilometres down, and the pressure there is over a thousand atmospheres.
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National Donald Duck Day
Donald has been played by two men in ninety years. Clarence Nash did the voice from 1934 until he died in 1985, and hand-picked his successor, who is still doing it.
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National Herbs and Spices Day
The difference is anatomical. A herb is the leaf of the plant; a spice is any other part — seed, bark, root, flower bud or fruit. Coriander is both, depending which end you use.
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National Corn on the Cob Day
Corn cannot survive without us. The kernels are locked onto the cob inside a husk, so a cob dropped on the ground produces a tangle of seedlings that all die.
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Anne Frank's Diary
The diary was a thirteenth-birthday present, given to her on June 12, 1942. She had picked it out herself in a shop a few days before, and started writing that afternoon.
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Sewing Machine Day
The idea that made sewing machines work was moving the eye of the needle from the blunt end to the point. Decades of failed machines came before that one change.
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Flag Day
The resolution that created the flag in 1777 is one sentence and specifies almost nothing — thirteen stripes, thirteen stars, a new constellation. It does not say how to arrange them.
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Magna Carta
Magna Carta was annulled by the Pope ten weeks after it was sealed, and the war it was meant to stop started again immediately. It failed completely at what it was for.
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National Fudge Day
Fudge was a mistake, and the name says so. "Fudge" meant a botch — a batch of caramel that had gone wrong by crystallising, and turned out to be nicer than what was intended.
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The Watergate Break-In
The burglars were caught because a security guard found tape over a door latch, removed it, and came back later to find it taped again.
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International Sushi Day
Sushi began as a way of preserving fish, not serving it fresh. The rice was packed around it to ferment for months and was then thrown away.
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Juneteenth
The Emancipation Proclamation had been in force for two and a half years before the news was enforced in Texas. June 19, 1865 is the day it finally arrived, in Galveston.
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National American Eagle Day
Franklin never proposed the turkey as the national bird. He made a joke about it in a private letter, complaining that the eagle on a new badge looked like one.
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The June Solstice
The longest day is not the hottest. Land and sea take about six weeks to catch up with the sun, which is why late July feels like summer and June 21 often does not.
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World Rainforest Day
The Amazon makes a large share of its own rain. Water falls, is drawn back up through the trees and breathed out, and falls again further west — several times before it reaches the Andes.
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National Pink Day
Pink was a boy's colour within living memory. A 1918 trade journal advised that pink, being a stronger and more decided shade, was suitable for boys, and blue for girls.
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Midsummer Day
Scandinavian midsummer is the bigger holiday of the year in places where Christmas is dark and this is not. In Sweden much of the country simply shuts.
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National Catfish Day
A catfish tastes with its whole body. It carries something like a hundred thousand taste buds, most of them on the skin rather than in the mouth.
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Harry Potter Published
The first print run was five hundred copies, three hundred of which went to libraries. One of those has since sold at auction for more than a house.
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Helen Keller's Birthday
The breakthrough came at a water pump. Anne Sullivan held Helen's hand under the spout and spelled W-A-T-E-R into the other one, and Helen understood that the finger movements meant the thing.
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Labor Day Made Federal
Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday six days after federal troops killed strikers in Chicago. It was an apology, passed unanimously, in an election year.
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National Waffle Iron Day
The waffle iron is medieval. Long-handled hinged plates were held over a fire to make communion wafers, and the patterns pressed into them were coats of arms and religious scenes.
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International Asteroid Day
Something exploded over Siberia on June 30, 1908 and flattened eighty million trees. No crater was ever found, because it never hit the ground.
Other Months
Looking for today's puzzle? The word search of the day has the full story behind today's occasion and the week ahead. Or browse all word search puzzles.